On Saturday Afternoon Summary

The narrator informs the reader that he once watched a man try to kill himself. It began on a Saturday afternoon, when everyone in the family but the narrator goes to the pictures, a scenario the narrator is sore about. He discusses that his family is one full of "black looks," which means members, especially his father, take on a dark mood or "black look," and in these times one had best stay away or else there might be shouting and violence. The narrator dismisses this tendency as something in the blood. It is during one of these foul moods that the father orders the narrator out of the house.

Outside, he sees a neighbor who hadn't lived near them long, carrying a new coiled rope. One neighbor lady asks what he needs the rope for, and he responds...